Rare Lindsay Shonteff Spy Movies to Play on the Big Screen in LA

Los Angeles' legendary New Beverly Cinema (owned by director Quentin Tarantino) blew my mind today by announcing that they'll be showcasing movies helmed by exploitation auteur Lindsay Shonteff in late February! And the line-up includes two of his spy movies. No. 1 of the Secret Service (1977) is the top of bill at 7:30pm on Monday, February 27 (paired with "brutal British crime film" The Bullet Machine), and The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967) closes out the double feature on Tuesday, February 28 (along with Curse of the Voodoo) at 9:25pm. 

Shonteff first became associated with the spy genre at the height of Bondmania when he introduced the world to Charles Vine in The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World (aka Licensed to Kill) in 1965. (Yes, the movie whose Sammy Davis, Jr. theme song is energetically sung by all the Circus staff in Tomas Alfredson's 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy!) Star Tom Adams reprised the role in two Sixties sequels which Shonteff sat out (Where the Bullets Fly and Somebody's Stolen Our Russian Spy), but Shonteff clearly felt a close attachment to the character, because he revived him under slightly altered names (for legal reasons) throughout the rest of his career with ever diminishing returns. The 1970s saw first Nicky Henson and then The New Avengers' Gareth Hunt essaying the role of "Charles Bind" in spy spoofs No. 1 of the Secret Service (1977) and The Man from S*E*X (1979), respectively, while 1990 found Michael Howe playing a Lamborghini Countach driving No. 1 in the nigh unwatchable Number One Gun. Just prior to No. 1 of the Secret Service (which one-time Bond contender Richard Todd steals as the urbane villain Arthur Loveday), Shonteff tried his hand at a serious spy movie adapting Len Deighton's Spy Story, the unofficial fourth "Harry Palmer" movie. 

But his finest hour in the genre may have come in 1967 when he updated the Sax Rohmer "Yellow Peril" femme fatale Sumuru for the spy craze, with Goldfinger's golden girl Shirley Eaton once more altering her skin color to play the Asian supervillain. Nope, there's nothing remotely PC about any of it, but if you can get past the appalling casting conventions of the time, The Million Eyes of Sumuru is a thoroughly entertaining Eurospy romp! It stars Eurospy stalwart George Nader (Jerry Cotton himself!) and Dr. Goldfoot foil Frankie Avalon as the intrepid agents who go up against Eaton. Amazingly, the New Beverly will be screening a 35mm IB Tech print of this cult classic!

Now let's be greedy and hope that perhaps this Shonteff celebration will continue into March with screenings of The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, Spy Story, and the two Big Zapper movies. (The Big Zapper was Shonteff's female private detective turned spy, an Emma Peel wannabe who could shoot lasers out of her... well, it was the Seventies and it was Shonteff, so you can guess.)

Movie Review: SAIGON: YEAR OF THE CAT (1983)

UK TV movie Saigon: Year of the Cat might be most notable today for what many of its key personnel went on to do, but it’s worth a watch as a sad historical spy movie, and does a good job conveying a strong sense of its titular time and place on a low budget. Frederick Forrest (The Conversation) plays CIA officer Bob Chesneau, stationed at the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the final weeks before the city fell to the North Vietnamese. Judi Dench (a decade before GoldenEye) plays the English bank employee, Barbara Dean, who falls in love with him at this inopportune time. The versatile Stephen Frears (who has a strange Bond connection, in that he was attached to direct the Die Another Day spinoff movie, Jinx, that ultimately fell apart) directs, from a script by playwright David Hare (who went on to write the excellent Page Eight spy thrillers). Frears frames the film as a star-crossed love story, opening with a retro-style title card and dramatic music that seem intended to evoke Casablanca, but the spy plot is far more interesting.

Chesneau receives intelligence from a good local asset, whose past record is unblemished, that the North will invade the city within three weeks. He tries desperately to convince his boss of the intel’s validity, but the station chief toes the line of official U.S. policy, insisting that an invasion is not imminent and refusing to make obvious evacuation preparations for fear of setting off a panic in the city. When the invasion does, inevitably, come, the evacuation is rushed and haphazard. Chesneau tries desperately to arrange to get all of his assets out of the country, which he had promised in good faith to do. Since the evacuation is a matter of historical record, it doesn’t seem too much of a spoiler to say that that doesn’t happen, and scenes of file cards with agents’ photos on them left in the embassy for North Vietnamese soldiers to discover, or bands of loyal South Vietnamese assets waiting nervously at their pre-appointed rendezvous points for American helicopters that will never come carry a heartbreaking, le Carré-esque sense of doom. 

The love story, of course, is similarly doomed, as Barbara does what she can to get her own local bank employees out before the Communist influx, even attempting to offer up her own spot on a helicopter. While the movie is mainly talky and stagey (not totally surprising, coming from a playwright and made for Thames Television), it becomes surprisingly exciting in its final act. Hundreds of extras swarm the streets as Vietnamese refugees try in vain to gain access to the U.S. embassy, escaping personnel pack themselves onto helicopters, and embassy staff furiously push as many documents as they can into industrial shredders and furnaces. There is nothing groundbreaking in Saigon: Year of the Cat, but it’s still a fairly compelling drama set against a fairly unique historical backdrop. Roger Rees (If Looks Could Kill), Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride), and E.G. Marshall (The Poppy is Also a Flower) round out the impressive cast.

Saigon: Year of the Cat is available on a quality DVD from Network in the UK, and in America, where it seems to be in the public domain, on various budget DVDs and compilations, as well as streaming on Amazon (free for Prime members).

Tradecraft: Marvel Announces Shang-Chi Casting, Title

As much as I love Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and I love it dearly!) and Black Widow, my favorite Marvel spy comic has to be the original 1970s run of The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu... particularly the issues showcasing the brilliant collaboration of writer Doug Moench and artist Paul Gulacy (a team who would go on to produce the best James Bond comic book to date, "Serpent's Tooth"). Last December, it was first reported that a Shang-Chi movie would feature among Marvel Studios' next slate of films. All has been quiet since then... until this past weekend. On a massive panel at Comic-Con Saturday night, Deadline reports, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige announced the first official details about the studio's upcoming Master of Kung Fu movie, including its title and who will play the titular master, Shang-Chi.

Feige told the assembled hordes of fans in SDCC's Hall H that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will open on February 12, 2021. Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu will play Shang-Chi. Best known for a Canadian sitcom called Kim's Convenience, Liu has earned spy cred with roles on Nikita and the Taken TV show. As studied Marvel fanatics will glean from the title, Iron Man comics villain the Mandarin (basically a Marvel rip-off of Sax Rohmer's 1920s-created "yellow peril" character Fu Manchu) will replace the actual Fu Manchu (a character Marvel licensed in the Seventies, but no longer has the rights to) as Shang-Chi's criminal mastermind father... and the great Tony Leung (Lust, Caution, The Silent War) will play him. Actress and rapper Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians, Ocean's 8) will also appear in the film, though her role was not announced. I can't really imagine her as Shang-Chi's love interest Leiko Wu, but she might make a good foil as his duplicitous half-sister Fah Lo Suee. (Or she could be playing an original comedic role, of course.) As previously announced, Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12) will direct, and Dave Callaham (Jean-Claude Van Johnson) handles scripting duties, making up an all Asian-American creative team driving the picture.

The comic book The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu was created in the early Seventies to (obviously) cash in on the kung fu craze of the time. Comics legends Steve Englehart (Batman: Strange Apparitions) and Jim Starlin (Avengers: Infinity War) originated the character, but it was the dynamic writer/artist team of Moench and Gulacy who became most associated with Shang-Chi... and who gave the comic a new direction as an espionage series.

Shang-Chi's real world origins at Marvel are a bit complicated, as the publisher had acquired the rights to Rohmer's villainous Fu Manchu character (still well-known at the time thanks to a series of Christopher Lee movies in the Sixties), but Englehart was more interested in the popular TV series of the time, Kung Fu. So he incorporated Rohmer's characters Fu Manchu and his nemesis, British adventurer Sir Denis Nayland-Smith, but invented a new character to star in the series more inspired by Kung Fu... Fu Manchu's hitherto unknown son, Shang-Chi. Though the father had seen to it that the son was trained from birth to be a Master of Kung Fu, when Shang-Chi discovered that the father he believed to be munificent was actually a diabolical criminal mastermind, he turned on him, and found employment with Nayland-Smith and the British Secret Service. In the hands of Moench and Gulacy, secret agent Shang-Chi encountered all manner of spy hijinks, from moles inside MI6 to supervillains with private islands, gadgets galore, and robotic armies. He also developed a roster of memorable sidekicks, including Nayland-Smith's assistant and bodyguard Black Jack Tarr (drawn by Gulacy to resemble Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King), and fellow MI6 agent Clive Reston (drawn by Gulacy at first to resemble Connery in Goldfinger, but later looking more and more like Roger Moore), who is strongly hinted to be the son of James Bond and the grand-nephew of Sherlock Holmes. Should the character of Black Jack Tarr make the movie roster (and it's hard to imagine Master of Kung Fu without him), I'd love to see Jason Statham brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in that role! Sure, he's too short... but I think he'd nail the attitude--and make a formidable physical foil for Liu.

While Marvel's most famous spy agency, S.H.I.E.L.D., never showed up in the pages of Master of Kung Fu (though Shang-Chi did eventually team up with Nick Fury and Black Widow in a multi-issue arc of Marvel Team-Up), Gulacy's stunning artwork owed a clear debt to Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. artist Jim Steranko. Like Steranko, Gulacy reveled in quasi-sci-fi technology and weaponry and innovative, experimental page layouts. (One particular standout turned the page into a maze, following Shang-Chi's progress against a variety of opponents as he navigated the labyrinth.) He also brought his own obsessions to the table, like Bond-inspired, movie poster-style splash pages, relentlessly sexy women in proto-Gaultier leather fashions, and the liberal use of famous actors' likenesses to "cast" the book with everyone from Bruce Lee (upon whom Gulacy's Shang-Chi was clearly based) to Marlon Brando, Christopher Lee (as Fu Manchu, of course), David Niven, and even Groucho Marx. The result was a truly unique book that far transcended (and consequently outlasted) the kung fu movie trend from which it was born, and drew influence from all sorts of popular culture. I think it may well be my very favorite Marvel comic. Long unavailable outside of back issue bins, the entire 125-issue series has at long last been reprinted over the past few years in four massive, hardcover omnibus volumes, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Marvel has also recently begun a line of cheaper paperback "Epic Collections."

Trailer for Park Chan-Wook's John le Carré Miniseries THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL

AMC has released the first full trailer for their latest BBC co-production, a follow-up to the hugely successful 2016 John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager. This time the same producers at The Ink Factory (including le Carré and his sons Simon and Stephen Cornwell) chose to tackle the author's 1983 tome The Little Drummer Girl, and they brought on the great Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) to direct. The imagery in this trailer is as haunting and awesome as I expected from him! The Little Drummer Girl follows Charlie, a naive young English actress recruited by Israeli Intelligence into the "theater of the real"– to infiltrate a Palestinian terror organization. She soon finds herself seduced by both sides and caught in the middle. Florence Pugh (King Lear) stars as Charlie, Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) plays Becker, the enigmatic stranger who seduces, recruits, and eventually handles her, and Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) plays a ruthlessly clever, masterfully manipulative, somewhat Smiley-like Mossad spymaster, Kurtz. The miniseries will air on AMC over three consecutive nights in two-hour episodes, premiering November 19 at 9 PM ET/PT. Additional episodes will air at 9 ET/PT on November 20 and November 21. It's expected to play on BBC in the UK around the same time.

Tradecraft: Lee Daniels Developing TV Remake of 1973 Cult Classic THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR

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Deadline reports that Lee Daniels (Empire, Lee Daniels' The Butler) has optioned the rights to Sam Greenlee's revolutionary 1969 spy novel The Spook Who Sat By the Door with the intention of turning it into a TV series for Fox 21 Television Studios. The book was previously, brilliantly filmed as a feature by Ivan Dixon in 1973 (with music by Herbie Hancock). While some are quick to lump it in with the blaxpoitation wave of that era, The Spook Who Sat By the Door was really something much more than that. It's truly revolutionary cinema, and riper than ever for a remake in today's tense racial climate in America. The story follows Dan Freeman, the CIA's first black officer in an affirmative action hiring initiative. After rigorous training in all manner of weapons, unarmed combat, sabotage, and counterinsurgency, Freeman is made "top secret reproduction center section chief..." a task that involves running a photocopier. Fed up, he eventually returns to his hometown of Chicago where he uses his training to militarize a local black street gang and create genuine insurgency in the streets of Nixon's America, figuring the country can't fight wars on two fronts (overseas and at home) simultaneously. Based on the highly effective techniques used on the streets of Chicago, the Intelligence Community (still underestimating Freeman) assumes that it must be Russian agents fomenting discord. (The antihero's backstory and motivation were recently borrowed for the villain in this year's blockbuster Black Panther.) The original film, long suppressed, is a genuine classic deserving of rediscovery, and Daniels is a talented storyteller. I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes of this!

Trailer: Netflix's THE ANGEL

Netflix has unveiled the trailer for their real-life 1970s period spy drama The Angel. Israeli helmer Ariel Vroman (Criminal) directs from a script by David Arata (Children of Men), based on the book by Uri Bar-Joseph, The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel. Marwan Kenzari, Toby Kebbell, Hannah Ware, Waleed Farouq Zuaiter, Maisa Abd Elhadi and Sasson Gabai star in the Middle East-set story of Ashraf Marwan, a spy whose actions demonstrably shaped history. The Angel debuts September 16 on the streaming service.

Tradecraft: AMC Sets Premiere Date for Le Carré Miniseries THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

According to Deadline, AMC has set a November premiere date for their flashy BBC co-production The Little Drummer Girl. That's exciting! When it began shooting earlier this year I figured we wouldn't see the latest John le Carré-based miniseries until next year. But the BBC recently released a trailer of its fall premieres, and The Little Drummer Girl was included. Even then, I worried AMC would hold off on U.S. broadcast until early next year, since there was a substantial delay between the UK and U.S. broadcast of the last BBC/AMC le Carré miniseries, The Night Manager. Now we know that won't be the case. (BBC has yet to announce the exact UK broadcast date, but viewers can expect it in the fall.)

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

Based on le Carré's 1983 novel, The Little Drummer Girl follows Charlie, a naive young English actress recruited by Israeli Intelligence into the "theater of the real"– to infiltrate a Palestinian terror organization. She soon finds herself seduced by both sides and caught in the middle.

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

Florence Pugh (King Lear) stars as Charlie, Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) plays Becker, the enigmatic stranger who seduces, recruits, and eventually handles her, and Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) plays a ruthlessly clever, masterfully manipulative, somewhat Smiley-like Mossad spymaster, Kurtz. Most excitingly, the brilliant Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) directs all six episodes. As with The Night Manager, le Carré and his sons  Simon and Stephen Cornwell (principals in the Ink Factory) are among the producers. Locations in the novel include Britain, Greece, Germany, Austria, Israel, and Libya. I'm not sure which ones make it into the miniseries (key book locations were changed and omitted from The Night Manager), but the production definitely filmed at the Acropolis, the first shoot ever to be granted permission to do so.

I can't wait till November!

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

Watch Peter Graves Get a Colonoscopy in Wonderful Seventies American Cancer Society MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE PSA

This is so bizarre it might be the best thing ever. Peter Graves, Greg Morris, and Peter Lupus all participate in this Mission: Impossible-themed PSA for the American Cancer Society from the early Seventies. (Judging by the episode clips, it looks like it was filmed at the beginning of Season 6 around the time of the episode "The Tram.") Graves takes a trip to the proctologist and introduces audiences to the importance of a colonoscopy. No, thankfully we're not actually subjected to watching the actor undergo that particular procedure, but we do see him going over the results with the doctor and marveling at the wonders of modern medicine. He also gets good scenes with Morris and Lupus, affording us a rare and cool glimpse behind the scenes of Mission: Impossible. Even if the interactions are earnestly staged for our benefit, it's still incredible to see onto the set of this wonderful series. And, of course, the message is still important! This really should have been included as an extra on one of the DVD sets. Thank goodness for YouTube! Check it out.

Read my review of Mission: Impossible III (2006) here.
Read my review of M:I-2 (2000) here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible (1996) here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Seventh TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season here.

Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fifth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fourth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Second TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The First TV Season here.

Full Trailer: CONDOR (2018)

Following up on March's teaser trailer, The Audience Network (yeah, that's a thing) has released the full trailer for their TV reimagining of 3 Days of the Condor entitled Condor. James Grady's novel Six Days of the Condor is one of the genre's all-time classics. Sydney Pollack then made it into one of the all-time classic spy films, Three Days of the Condor. Can lightning strike thrice? Can the same story now be successfully adapted once again, into a different medium? Well, it worked for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so I suppose it's just possible... but obviously a long shot. Still, this full trailer looks pretty good, even if it seems clear that they've ditched the brilliant purpose of the CIA department Condor works for in both original versions.

As we first learned over a year ago, the series protagonist played by Max Irons (Crooked House) will be named Joe Turner, like Robert Redford's character in the film, and not Ronald Malcolm, as in the book. But the movie was close enough to its source material (despite a few key differences) that if the TV series is at all faithful to either, it should at least resemble both. Katherine Cunningham (The Playboy Club) takes on the Faye Dunaway role of Kathy Hale (again using the character's movie name rather than book name), and 20-year-old Israeli Arab actress Leem Lubany (Rock the Casbah) plays Gabrielle Joubert, a variation on the iconic role of the professional killer played so memorably by Max Von Sydow in the film. William Hurt, Mira Sorvino, Brendan Fraser, and Bob Balaban also star.

Condor premieres June 1 on The Audience network. My understanding is that the Audience Network was previously only available to DirecTV satellite subscribers, but now there is an app, DirecTV Now (similar to HBO Go, I think), that allows users to stream it on various set-top devices. I haven't done this myself, and can't vouch for it. But come June, I will have to figure out how to see it, and this seems the easiest way.

First Teaser Trailer: CONDOR TV Series

It was just over three years ago that we first heard Three Days of the Condor would be remade as a TV series. Last week AT&T's Audience Network released the first trailer for their upcoming series, Condor (a simplified title that, while lacking some coolness, conveniently avoids the potentially limiting question of a specified number of days altogether), a reimagining of one of the spy genre's cornerstone stories, based on James Grady's classic 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor and Sydney Pollack's iconic 1975 film of it, Three Days of the Condor. While the trailer doesn't look very familiar to fans of the movie or the novel, the description on the show's official website does:

Joe Turner has always been conflicted about his work for the CIA. But when something he’s discovered gets his entire office killed, leaving Joe as the only survivor and forcing him to go on the run, the theoretical reservations he’s always harbored turn into all-too-real moral dilemmas. Under life or death pressure, Joe will be forced to redefine who he is and what he’s capable of in order to discover who’s behind this far-reaching conspiracy, and stop them from completing their deadly objective that threatens the lives of millions. Inspired by Paramount’s Sydney Pollack 1975 political thriller Three Days of the Condor. Condor stars Max Irons, William Hurt, Leem Lubany, Mira Sorvino, Brendan Fraser, and Bob Balaban.

So, as we first learned a year ago, the series protagonist played by Max Irons (Crooked House) will be named Joe Turner, like Robert Redford's character in the film, and not Ronald Malcolm, as in the book. But the movie was close enough to its source material (despite a few key differences) that if the TV series is at all faithful to either, it should at least resemble both. Katherine Cunningham (The Playboy Club) takes on the Faye Dunaway role of Kathy Hale (again using the character's movie name rather than book name), and 20-year-old Israeli Arab actress Leem Lubany (Rock the Casbah) plays Gabrielle Joubert, a variation on the iconic role of the professional killer played so memorably by Max Von Sydow in the film.

When it was first announced, the project was described as a limited series (what we used to call miniseries). But that's changed, and now it's just referred to as a series. Should we get subsequent seasons, I would love to see them based on some of Grady's later Condor novels--especially the overlooked second one, Shadow of the Condor. I kind of doubt that will happen, but it would be cool.

My understanding is that the Audience Network was previously only available to DirecTV satellite subscribers, but now there is an app, DirecTV Now (similar to HBO Go, I think), that allows users to stream it on various set-top devices. I haven't done this myself, and can't vouch for it. But when Condor premieres this June, I will have to figure out how to see it, and this seems the easiest way.

Tradecraft: Female Blaxploitation Agents Reactivated on Big and Small Screens

Blaxploitation heroines Cleopatra Jones and Christie Love are both making comebacks... with an espionage twist. Deadline reports that ABC is resurrecting the 1974 TV movie and subsequent series Get Christie Love!, but dropping the exclamation mark and adding spying. Christie Love, as played by Teresa Graves, was a police detective. But in the new version starring Kylie Bunbury (Pitch, Under the Dome), is, according to the trade, "an African American, female CIA agent who leads a highly trained elite ops unit. Beautiful and charismatic, Christie transforms into whoever she needs to be in order to get the job done especially when it’s down to the wire and the stakes are life and death." The new "action-packed, music-driven" hour-long drama hails from Power creator/showrunner Courtney Kemp and producers Vin Diesel, Debra Martin Chase and Shana C. Waterman.

This news comes on the heels of an earlier Deadline story reporting that sexy, karate-chopping government agent Cleopatra Jones (one of Christie Love's inspirations) is also making a comeback--on the big screen. Jones travels the world smashing drug rings under the cover of being an international model with a gloriously flamboyant wardrobe that would make Fatima Blush jealous. According to the trade, "the studio has set Misha Green (Underground, Lovecraft) to write the script and produce a film that will present the heroine very much as the female answer to James Bond." Deadline points out that "those comparisons were made when the original hit film was released, partly because Jones was so adept at martial arts and drove a Corvette Stingray fully equipped with automatic weapons." Tamara Dobson (Amazons) starred in the 1973 original (opposite Never Say Never Again's Bernie Casey) and its less successful 1975 sequel Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. The Cleopatra Jones movies stood out from many of their grimmer blaxploitation brethren thanks to their sharp comedy. No one has yet been cast to fill Dobson's shoes.

Tradecraft: Ed Brubaker's Comic Book VELVET Coming to Television

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Television is developing a series for its corporate sibling The Paramount Network (as Spike TV is soon rebranding) based on Ed Brubaker's acclaimed Image Comics series Velvet. After their historic, espionage-tinged run on Marvel's Captain America (a run which saw the introduction of the Winter Soldier and the death of Steve Rogers, and largely shaped the cinematic Cap), writer Ed Brubaker and artist Steve Epting reunited at Image to create the Cold War-era female spy series Velvet. The premise is basically, "What if Moneypenny was really a badass secret agent in her own right?" posed before Dynamite Entertainment decided to take the actual character in that direction in their own comics. Only Brubaker's premise continued "...and she had to solve/avenge the murder of 007?" It's an interesting starting point, and it fuels an exciting story rich in the conventions of the genre while also subverting them.

Kyle Killen (Lone Star, Awake) will pen the pilot script, while Brubaker and Epting themselves will serve in producing capacities. Velvet is a great comic that would make a great TV show. I really hope this makes it to series, and I really hope Paramount keeps the comic's period setting.

Want to get caught up on the comic before it comes to television? Every issue of Velvet to date has been collected in a massive (yet affordable!) deluxe hardcover edition, available from Amazon.

Tradecraft: William Hurt Among Cast for CONDOR Remake Series

Variety reports that the cast has been set for The Audience Network's TV series version of 3 Days of the Condor. (All the trades refer to it as being "inspired by" Sydney Pollack's iconic 1975 film, rather than adapted from James Grady's 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor (itself a cornerstone of the spy genre). Indeed, the series protagonist played by Max Irons is named Joe Turner, like in the film, and not Ronald Malcolm, as in the book. But the movie was close enough to its source material (despite a few key differences) that if the TV series is at all faithful to either, it should at least resemble both.

Joining the previously cast Max Irons (Crooked House) as Turner are Hollywood heavyweights William Hurt (The Accidental Tourist), Bob Balaban (Best in Show), Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite), and Brenden Fraser (The Quiet American). Anyone who's seen A History of Violence knows that Hurt would be a perfect choice to play the assassin originally portrayed so memorably by Max Von Sydow, a role it's absolutely crucial for the series to nail in order to succeed. (And a role that's actually much more interesting in the movie than in the book, where he is more of a generic hitman.) But... that's not who he's playing, unfortunately. That part will actually be played by 20-year-old Israeli Arab actress Leem Lubany. Lubany was very good in Rock the Casbah (2015) and scored great reviews for the Oscar-nominated Omar (2013)... but her casting in this part raises some alarm bells for me. I've got no problem with the gender flip, but the age is a different matter. Casting a sexy young star in the role certainly changes the part from Von Sydow's scene stealing elder statesman of murder for hire. And based on Deadline's description of her character, Gabrielle Joubert ("an elite Special Forces operative whose formidable physical talents are matched by a deep emotional imbalance"), the role sounds closer to the generic killer of the book than the fascinating enigma of the film. Which is too bad.

Hurt, meanwhile, will play what sounds like a variation on John Houseman's character from the film. Per Variety: "Bob Partridge [is] a decorated CIA field operative who is rusty and a little soft after 20 years behind a desk. He’s tried to make changes for the better while at the CIA, including recruiting a team of the country’s top young minds to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to some of the United States’ most intractable problems."

Balaban is career CIA administrator Reuel Abbott, a name I don't recall from either the book or the movie. Sorvino, according to a different Deadline story, "will play Marty Frost, an investigator who has come out of retirement to take over the investigation after an attack at Joe’s office." It sounds like her role may be inspired by Cliff Robertson's in the film.

Fraser, per yet another Deadline story, "will play Nathan Fowler, an unstable yet efficient central cog in an unholy alliance between the private military company that employs him and the CIA. He’s motivated by his hatred of radical Islam, but also by his inner child’s desire to win the approval of his war-hero father. Nathan is redeemed by his fierce love for his daughter, but that relationship and his fanaticism are on a collision course."

Katherine Cunningham (The Playboy Club) takes on the Faye Dunaway role of Kathy Hale (again using the character's movie name rather than book name), reimagined for our times as "a corporate lawyer who’s lonely and dissatisfied with her buttoned-up life." Kristoffer Polaha (Castle) plays another character from the movie, Turner's friend and colleague Sam Barber.

Tradecraft: Night Manager Producers Plot New Period Spy Drama

Deadline reports that The Ink Factory, the production company behind the hit John le Carré TV adaptation The Night Manager (along with films of his work including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, A Most Wanted Man and Our Kind of Traitor), is plotting a new spy drama. The company, run by two of le Carré’s sons, will partner with Rise Films and Film4 to develop a Cold War spy film not based on one of the author's novels. Instead, the inspiration for The American War, an espionage tale set against the backdrop of the fall of Saigon in the last days of the Vietnam War in 1975, will be two non-fiction memoirs by former CIA agent Frank Snepp: Decent Interval: An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam and Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech. Tom Morton-Smith, who wrote the acclaimed play "Oppenheimer," about the father of the atomic bomb, will pen the screenplay.

According to the trade, "the film will follow the rising tensions between the intelligence community and a U.S. administration whose refusal to accept the facts prompted a catastrophic compromise of vulnerable American and South Vietnamese personnel and their families, followed by a refugee crisis. Despite this system failure and heart-breaking betrayal, individual acts of heroism and Snepp’s own desperate last-minute efforts to persuade his superiors in Saigon to admit defeat resulted in the evacuation of many people." So, obviously, they're going for a very timely take on the material!

Tradecraft: Max Irons is the New Condor in Three Days Remake

Deadline reports that Max Irons (Jeremy's son, soon to be seen in the Julian Fellowes-penned Agatha Christie adaptation Crooked House) will attempt to fill Robert Redford's iconic shoes as CIA analyst Joe Turner in the previously announced MGM-produced miniseries remake of 3 Days of the Condor. The new Condor, as it is called (thus avoiding the 3/6 discrepancy over the number of days Condor spends on the run between the 1975 movie and the James Grady novel upon which it's based, Six Days of the Condor), will take the form of a 10-episode series for AT&T's Audience Network. (Great, another must-see spy show that requires ordering a whole new cable package, like Berlin Station!) Like Redford, Irons will play Joe Turner (not Ronald Malcolm, as he's named in the book), the desk-bound CIA analyst code-named Condor who finds himself on the run and in way over his head. Here's how the trade describes the new take:

Turner is an idealistic millennial who secretly joins the CIA hoping to reform it from within. But when everyone in his office is massacred by professional killers, this brilliant analyst is forced out of his ivory tower think tank and into battle with the most dangerous elements in the military-industrial complex. If he is to have any chance of surviving, Joe will have to do things he never imagined himself capable of — and discover that no one knows their true character until they’ve been tested under fire.

The good news is that other than the de facto "millennial" label, that description pretty much matches both the classic movie and the classic novel. (Both are essential for any spy fans!) The bad news is it doesn't really give us any hint of which source the scripts by Jason Smilovic (Lucky Number Slevin, My Own Worst Enemy) and Todd Katzberg will hew closer to, or what changes they've made to the material. But it is kind of amazing how easily Grady's plot (originally conceived in the Nixon era) can be applied to today's post-Snowden world and feel timely.

It was announced around the same time this project was first announced (early 2015) that Jay Roach (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery) was attached to direct a film of Grady's 2006 novel Mad Dogs, which features an older Condor in a bit part, but we haven't heard anything about that since. At any rate, I have high hopes for this new Condor miniseries! The material is still relevant, and Condor deserves to be a better known brand in the spy landscape. It would be great if the series proves successful and subsequent seasons draw from Grady's follow-ups Shadow of the Condor and Last Days of the Condor!

R.I.P. Christopher Wood, 007 and Remo Williams Screenwriter

I was very saddened to read on The Book Bond that screenwriter and author Christopher Wood passed away over the weekend at the age of 79. Wood's contributions to both the cinematic and literary James Bond are sometimes overlooked, but tremendous contributions nonetheless.

After poor sales doomed his early ambitions as a serious novelist, the Cambridge-educated Wood turned his talents to penning humorous erotic potboilers under the name Timothy Lea. In this realm, he found great success, creating the popular "Confessions" series. Beginning with Confessions of a Window Cleaner in 1971, Wood wrote 19 pseudonymous "Confessions" paperbacks during the Seventies (selling in excess of 3 million copies) and helped launch that decade's odd genre of British sex comedies (a craze that also kick-started the career of future Bond director Martin Campbell). Under his own name, Wood penned the screenplays for four popular Confessions movies (the first helmed by former Bond director Val Guest) which made an unlikely sex symbol out of shaggy star Robin Askwith. He also wrote the Michael York comedy Seven Nights in Japan (1976) for director Lewis Gilbert. (For Bond fans, this was Gilbert's second Japan-set film to feature Charles Gray, following You Only Live Twice.) This led to Gilbert bringing him to EON Productions' attention, and he was hired to write Gilbert's next Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me.

While Bond scripting was always a team effort (Richard Maibaum also received writing credit on Spy, and the writer of the previous three films, Tom Mankiewicz, did a lot of uncredited work), there is no question that Christopher Wood was at the very center of that team in the most formative period of Roger Moore's tenure as 007. While Moore had already had two outings as the famous secret agent, it was The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) that really defined his incarnation of James Bond. Wood and Lewis also stuck around for the follow-up, Moonraker, in 1979. While it's not difficult to believe that the Confessions screenwriter coined some of the series most egregious double-entendres, Wood contended that Moore himself deserved substantial credit for those. Whoever was responsible, it was the right formula for the time, and arguably saved the franchise, which had flagged early in the decade. Moonraker became the highest grossing entry to date.

From Adrian Harrington Rare Books

But Wood's contributions to James Bond weren't limited to celluloid. Because Ian Fleming had stipulated that the movie producers could only use the title The Spy Who Loved Me and not the plot of his novel (an experimental outing narrated by the Bond Girl, with Bond himself absent until its final third), the resulting movie bore no resemblance to the book. Consequently, it became the first Bond movie to get a novelization - and Christopher Wood wrote it, making him the third official continuation author, after Kingsley Amis (Colonel Sun) and John Pearson (James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007). To differentiate it from the Fleming title, Wood's novelization was titled James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Me. Moonraker, reinvented as a space story to cash on the Star Wars craze, also deviated completely from Fleming's novel (rather a pity, since it was one of his best) other than the villain's name. So Wood once again wrote a novelization, James Bond and Moonraker. Despite the vast disparity between the over the top adventures of the Late Seventies cinematic 007 and Ian Fleming's more grounded novels, Wood managed the neat task of reconciling the two takes in his books. (Even Kingsley Amis praised him for this feat.) The results were two continuation novels with a very Fleming feel, much more successful pastiches than Sebastian Faulks' later attempt to capture Fleming's style. As such, they've long been held in high regard by Bond fans, considered among the best of the numerous continuation novels. The UK hardcover first editions, from Jonathan Cape, are also highly collectible, since they had a very limited print run geared mainly towards libraries. Paperback editions from both the UK and USA are easy to come by and worth tracking down.

While he didn't continue to work on the James Bond films in the 1980s, Wood did collaborate with a former Bond director to bring another famous fictional secret agent to the big screen in that decade. He wrote Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins in 1985 for director Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger). Adapted from the popular Destroyer series of paperback Men's Adventure novels by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, the Fred Ward/Joel Grey movie was sadly not successful enough to ever make good on the promise of its title, and we never got to see the adventure continue. But Wood brought to the table all of the fun of his Seventies Bond movies, and the results are enormously entertaining.

Wood continued to work throughout the Nineties and early 2000s as a screenwriter (writing scripts for Roger Corman) and novelist (including the well-received autobiographical showbiz satire California, Here I Am, which was praised on its publication by future Bond novelist William Boyd). Wood's final published work was a 2006 memoir of his time spent with Agent 007, entitled James Bond, The Spy I Loved. Candid, humorous, and informative (though direly in need of a better proof-reader!), it's a must-read for any fan of Seventies James Bond, and a fitting celebration of the indelible mark that Christopher Wood left on the world of 007.

Mission: Impossible TV Soundtrack Box Set Coming Next Month!

2015 has proven not just a great year for spy movies in theaters, but also for archival spy releases. I thought Network's Deadlier Than the Male Blu-ray would be tough to beat, but La La Land has just done it with the announcement that they will release what's long been a Holy Grail for fans of spy music: a six-disc box set of soundtrack music from the Mission: Impossible TV series! Produced by spy music expert Jon Burlingame (who also produced and wrote the liner notes for the excellent FSM Man From U.N.C.L.E. soundtrack CD releases a decade ago, and literally wrote the book on James Bond film music), Mission: Impossible: The Television Scores contains selections from all seven seasons of the iconic spy series starring Peter Graves, Greg Morris and Peter Lupus (among many others) that ran from 1966-1973, the majority of them never before released! While Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible Theme is probably the most famous and iconic piece of spy TV music ever, he is certainly not the only composer to contribute to the fantastic sound of this series. Besides Schifrin, the work of Gerald Fried, Jerry Fielding, Don Ellis, Richard Hazard, Robert Drasnin and more will will also be showcased in this box set. And every track has been meticulously restored and remastered from the original studio elements. (Most of them are presented in the original mono.) Burlingame, who personally selected each piece included, also contributes comprehensive liner notes contained in three informative booklets loaded with photos. (Just take a look at his Man From U.N.C.L.E. liner notes for an idea of how awesome these will probably be!) According to the press release, the 6-disc set is housed in an attractive hard-cover slipcase. Just look at the picture! It's so attractive that even if it didn't have all that incredible music I'd still want this thing on my shelf! The music was restored by Chris Malone and mastered by Doug Schwartz, with art direction on the package by Joe Sikoryak.

UPDATE: Burlingame revealed on Facebook that "Every single episode that had original music is represented. In some cases it's just a few minutes; in the case of the Schifrin-scored episodes it's a lot."

Limited to 1500 units, Mission: Impossible – The Television Scores will be available for order from La La Land's website starting July 28, 2015 at 12 noon PST (just in time for the release of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in theaters) and will commence shipping out to customers on August 10. That's right around the corner! The box set retails for $99.98.

And you also need to clear just a little more room in the M section of your spy music shelf. La La Land will also release Joe Kraemer's score for Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation on August 4. If you order through their website, the first 100 units will be signed by the composer. You can currently listen a sample track from that score on Soundcloud.
Thanks to Collin for the heads-up!

Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Seventh TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fifth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fourth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Second TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The First TV Season here.

Gary Oldman's Tinker Tailor Sequel Headed to HBO?

It's been quite a while since we've heard anything on the Smiley front about a follow-up to Tomas Alfredson's fantastic 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (review here). More than two years ago, StudioCanal Chairman and CEO Olivier Courson revealed, "We are working on Smiley’s People with Working Title. It’s still at the development stage - but, yes, the old team of Peter Straughan and Tomas Alfredson is back together." Now, Tinker co-writer Straughan has just scripted Wolf Hall, the popular and well received miniseries adaptation of Hilary Mantel's bestselling novels about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. The Writers Guild of America's official magazine, Written By, interviewed Straughan about the miniseries for their current issue, and in the course of the article casually drops this previously unreported tidbit: "Currently, [Straughan] is adapting the Le Carré novel Smiley's People for HBO. It's another huge task...." HBO? That's interesting! HBO was not involved in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which was produced by StudioCanal and Working Title Films, and distributed in the U.S. by Focus Features. The film performed better and made more of a critical and cultural impact in Britain (where it won two BAFTA Awards) than the States, so I suppose it's possible that StudioCanal couldn't find a theatrical partner in the U.S. and instead opted for TV.

HBO has indeed proved a refuge lately for A-list filmmakers with adult projects. Steven Soderbergh famously made his dream project Liberace there after every film studio in town reportedly passed on a theatrical version despite the attachment of stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. It's also possible that HBO Films might be involved in a theatrical venture. While most of their theatrical features, like this summer's Entourage, are based on existing HBO shows, they did offer a limited run of the documentary Going Clear last month. The involvement of HBO also raises the intriguing question of whether the Seventies-set sequel, which Straughan has previously said would incorporate some elements of the second novel of the "Karla Trilogy," The Honourable Schoolboy, with the bulk (and title) of the third, Smiley's People, might emerge as a miniseries instead of a feature. It was, of course, previously filmed that way by the BBC in 1982. Personally, I would bet not. I would hazard a guess that we might be looking at a StudioCanal/Working Title/HBO co-production released theatrically in Britain and Europe and airing on HBO (perhaps in conjunction with a limited, Oscar-qualifying theatrical run) in the United States. But I would sure love some sort of official announcement that might shed some more light on the subject! It's a pity Written By didn't ask a follow-up question for clarification.

As long as the key team of Alfredson (Let the Right One In), Straughan (The Debt) and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (SPECTRE) all return, and key actors like Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ciaran Hinds are involved, I don't much care if I see the sequel in a theater or on TV. Just so long as we get to see another Oldman Smiley movie! If HBO were to bring substantial extra funding to the equation, though, what I would really like to see would be the Hong Kong-set Honourable Schoolboy as that follow-up before concluding the trilogy with Smiley's People. Alas, it seems unlikely we'll ever see that masterpiece properly adapted due to cost issues. And I can hardly complain about a new version of Smiley's People, which is also a wonderful novel!

Read my article "George Smiley: An Introduction" here.

Tradecraft: 3 Days of the Condor Gets Remade for Television

The Hollywood Reporter (via Dark Horizons) reports that we'll soon get a new adaptation of one of the all-time classic spy novels, which was previously adapted into one of the all-time classic spy movies. According to the trade, Skydance Productions (better known for their big screen ventures like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and the upcoming fifth entry in that series, but also behind WGN's atomic espionage series Manhattan), in partnership with MGM and Paramount TV, is developing what they call "a small-screen remake of Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor" (1975). Whether that's really what it is, or whether writers Jason Smilovic (Lucky Number Slevin, My Own Worst Enemy) and Todd Katzberg are going back to the original source material, James Grady's 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor, remains to be seen. Differences between the page and screen are greater than just the number of days for which Condor is on the run, and both have their strong suits. The ending is radically different from version to version. So is the name of the hero, interestingly, changed from Ronald Malcolm in the book to Joe Turner in the movie. When we hear which name they're going with for the TV lead, that might be a clue as to which source they'll primarily draw from. The project is currently being shopped to networks, and it's unclear at this time if it will be a miniseries or an ongoing show.

Grady recently published a new sequel, Last Days of the Condor, (as well as a short story, "Next Day of the Condor," which bridges the 37-year gap between the second book, Shadow of the Condor, and the new one) which was optioned by MGM for a possible film. (It would certainly be great to see Robert Redford return to that role.) And the Condor character also made a cameo in his 2006 novel Mad Dogs, which is itself being prepped for a film version by director Jay Roach (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.) I love both the book and the movie, and I have no problem with a new television interpretation of Condor. In fact, I think it's a great idea. I'll be very curious to see how this one pans out.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: The Top Secret Life of Edgar Briggs

Network have been slowly working their way through many ITV spy series over the years, and in March they'll finally get to one that I've never seen, but long been curious about. Cold War comedy The Top Secret Life of Edgar Briggs ran for a single 13-episode season in 1974 and starred David Jason (Rough Diamond, Danger Mouse) as clueless SIS agent Edgar Briggs. In the tradition of Inspector Clouseau and Maxwell Smart, Briggs usually managed to bungle his way to success, rising - mystifyingly, to his flummoxed colleagues - to the number two position in the Service. The 2-disc set is out on March 3, and will retail for £12.24.